Thursday, 3 November 2011

Vincent Fleury a French embryologist, the Research director at Centre National de Recherche Scientififique in Paris has developed a novel filming technique which can capture the live movements of early gestation chick embryos. His findings propose that the filmed motion is the pulsing from a transition boundary between the dipole/quadrupole field throughout the formation of the head in the chick embryo. This is of course consistent with the predictions the approach advocated here makes since 2004.

Also see this post for proposed EM mechanisms in development

The developmental labs at Dundee university, Scotland are also modelling the dipole flow. Please note theirs is more general to the entire embryo. The point is their modelling also requires on electrostatic or EM dipole to produce an explanation for early developmental forces.

BACKGROUND TO DR VINCENT FLEURY AND STRUCTURALISM

Fleury has long advocated (and written volumes) for a view of neurodevelopment called “structuralism”
which was first proposed by Darwin but has been controversial with geneticists (who often misrepresent it by referring to old models) seeking a bottom up solution for evolution. The concept of structuralism as it stands today is that the facility to promote structural integrity is highly conserved to work hand in hand with gene expression for developmental mechanics. i.e. Genes transcribe larger emergent principles or physical structures in what is currently considered a multi-level top down/bottom up system. Fleury and others, argues this conserving for emergent structures is the reason most creatures are tetrapods (four-limbed forms). Fleury studied chemical vortices in early stage Gastrulation to arrive at this position.

The developmental biology Professor PZ myers slated Fleury initially in 2009 as “crackpot” science incapable of producing lab work to back up his claims. Yet Fleury produces competent, in depth works on developmental genetics and his colleages are innovating new lab methods (Myers even misrepresnts, Fleury as being incapable of labwork when Fleurys personal webpage shows many dozens of photos taken in his lab !). Myers then follows this by posting Dr Fleury's artistic attempt to try and express a concept describing the chemical flow. PZ myers clearly is playing foul, making false accusations, then not illustrating this image is an analogy picture. Considering the depth and competence of this work it was contained in, which would be considered a very good introduction to the state of the art in this field, Myers is either incompetent or intent on misrepresentation of these ideas.

OK, back on track. What is interesting is Fleury has independently predicted the brains dipole structure. I think we have something in common. i.e. A common graphic i use.

Fleury also discusses cortex evolution as becoming increasingly spherical as I did in my 2009 paper. Myself and Fleury have both arrived at this concept independently from each other with an entirely different approach. Fleury from studying embryology derived this from the bottom up, and myself tearing apart and meta analyzing NIH databases, trying to find the cause for lateralization of cortical function from the top down (my paper here) Whats even more interesting is that as we deducted our way into the system from either end we both ended up arriving at the conclusion of of a dipole/quadrupole interaction for most of the brains development quite independently. As of now we differ on opinions as to the type of dipole (Fleury, Electro-osmotic, Myself, Magnetohydrodynamic). Although important, these are finer points to be sorted out later. The fact is that the big picture, the dipole/quadrupole interaction is a pretty interesting convergence considering neither of our fields of interest, methods, approaches and aims are similar in any way.

(NOTE: some people still look at these graphics and try to explain the similarity away in terms of least action principle or fractals etc, however if you care to read into the work presented here further in previous posts, it will soon become clear that the "entire" radial glia which produces this does have magnetic dipole mechanisms. A more brief summary is here)

"we know now that a lot of details of morphology are directly affected in subtle and not-so-subtle ways by the genetics of the organism. But I think we can also make a case that the modern molecular biological approach is also missing a significant element."

Richard Dawkins also opposed Goodwin, but still concedes. Clearly Myers and Dawkins are conflicted

"it's important that somebody like Brian Goodwin is saying that kind of thing, because it provides the other extreme, and the truth probably lies somewhere between..........It's a genuinely interesting possibility that the underlying laws of morphology allow only a certain limited range of shapes.".

1. FLEURY'S LAB FINDINGS

Fleury used mathematical techniques taken from PIV (live motion vectors in filming) to derive the conclusion that the forces he is filming in the developing brain are hydrodynamic dipole pulses, interrupted by quadrupole flow.

Anybody familiar with my work will immediately realize this is what has been predicted by dipole neurology theory. The folds in the Dipole above (A) are described by the left/right embryo dipole vectors (for motion in equation) taken from PIV trackings. As the neural folds collide a "reflection" condition occurs resulting in 4 quadrupole motions described by

"the mathematical formula describing magnetic fields could also be used to model fields of vectors representing the hydrodynamic flow of embryonic cells. When the two sides collided, the embryonic cells were subject to forces that can be described as those of two magnets oriented head on, which resulted in the formation of the head."

So we see a shift from dipole to quadrupole state within the early development of the chick head. This is not exactly consistent with my predictions. I would have thought there would originate a quadrupole flow initially from the ventricular zone, which had to evolve radial glia pulsing mechanisms, to overcome the earths static field. Any required amplification of the pulse to overcome the static field, leads to a fragmentation of the timing for quadrupole coherence, so the chemical gradients then switch back and forward between left/right (hemisphere top view down) assymetrical dipole vectors.

However this is early days for this area of science. Perhaps the first quadrupole was too weak for the PIV tracking to detect. I also predict that later in development the quadrupoles will develop linearity as the limbic system is composed of coherent layers. Linearising of the quadrupole can allow more complexity of the spherical harmonic type morphology proposed for the limbic system. Basically the dipole/ linear quadrupole integration for cortex / limbic system. But the situation above could be different for the chick embryo with the cortex to cerebellum size ratio being far higher than humans. I have not yet produced a clear cerebellum prediction but so far it appears to be a second but reduced dipolar/quadrupole integration. As the brain develops further (this labwork is early development) each morphological structure more fully there should be a more complex interaction of fields to represent formation of each structure.

If this is not clear what this means is the dipole neurology theory now has the following.

The second independent findings consistent with my 2003, 2009 structural prediction that spherical harmonics (the components of quadrupoles when linearized) dictate the form for the lateral ventricles and the limbic system (first here).

Actual live lab work illustrating in motion the hydrodynamic dipole and quadrupole are present in the developing embryonic brain at the first stages predicted. That should now eliminate those who wish to argue that the cortex dipole structure arises from a collection of least action principles or fractals.

If anybody pulls the paper for this groundbreaking work "The Dynamic Architecture of Hox Gene Clusters" they will notice that the Hox gene clusters produce a linear sequence which dictates precisely the form but stops at the head. It appears that there is no sequence for forebrain development. Obviously the missing instructions are for the Radial Glia. So it is clear at this stage that evidence is not being made to fit, the predicted mechanism for the Dipole, Quadrupole formation is chemical gradients pulsing through connexin hemichannels (see below). i.e. The genetic sequence is predicted to cluster (and conserve) for this mechanism at a high level in the development hierarchy. As these models and findings just produce the head formation, none of this as of yet is providing a strong basis to support tetrapod form resulting for vortices. However that aspect has always been out-with the scope for the Dipole/Quadrupole models proposed for brain structure.

finally a nice quote from

A New Science of Qualities
A Talk With Brian Brian Goodwin [4.29.97]

"All the great scientists, Einstein, Feynman, you name them, would say intuition is the way they arrived at their basic insights, their new ways of putting parts together into coherent wholes. The famous guys are allowed to say this. The rest of us have to pretend that we're really basing everything on hard fact"

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Who is this guy ?

I advocate a novel view for understanding neuroscience and its computational transcription. That our understanding will remain incomplete without deriving general insights from the entire structural morphology.
The work on this website is purely to advance this part time project, which often involves developing the concepts/results by co-authoring with senior academics. I hope this project will develop into a successful PhD and can contribute to advancing our understanding of natural computation. For regular activities I am a Part time IT system analyst in the Scottish Health and Social charities sector, while furthering my studies in the natural sciences at the Open University.